By Mark Smith
In California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, real estate development has an insatiable appetite for … farm land. The American Farmland Trust’s report Saving Farmland, Growing Cities places aggregate population growth and farmland consumption into perspective
The population of the San Joaquin Valley, now roughly 4 million, is expected to more than double by 2050. At the same time, if the Valley keeps developing... Read More

How can we expect to reduce sprawl if we don’t allow real estate in key locations to coevolve with market demand?
Mark Smith recently spoke at the University of San Diego about Planned Densification. In this clip from that talk (5:28), Smith explains asynchrony as an economic cause of sprawl, and as a barrier to coevolution.
The Wedge
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It’s About Time
By Mark Smith
Planned Densification LLC releases a video outlining some of our key considerations with Suburban Retrofit and Sprawl Repair–namely ridiculously mismatched timescales in real estate development and how so many things are ‘out of control’ in real estate development, because of the lack of functional control of the development process by developers. Planned Densification predicts and prepares solutions... Read More

By Errol Cowan, PhD
Planned densification (PD) was conceived of by Mark Smith in the 1990s and outlined in the June 2009 issue of Urban Land. The concept is simple and makes intuitive sense. As communities grow, their need and demand for accommodating density increases as does market support for it. Integrative long-term public and private planning for intensified future density and infrastructure is prescribed by Smith to capitalize upon this dynamic,... Read More